This invention relates to an apparatus to facilitate movement of containers and other objects over a surface, and is intended particularly though not necessarily solely to provide an apparatus to facilitate the loading and unloading of cargo containers from the beds of trucks for example. Further, the apparatus of the invention enables freight containers to be readily and efficiently loaded and unloaded.
Efficient transport of goods from one location to the next is reliant on suitable mechanisms for transfer of the goods between transporting vehicles such as from the cargo hold of a plane to the deck of a truck. In order to facilitate efficient loading of trucks, commercial trucks may be fitted with a rollerized deck. However, some trucks do not have rollerized decks and this slows down the loading process.
Another area of the overall transportation process that is reliant on efficient transfer mechanisms is the loading and unloading of containers such as air or sea freight containers. This process generally involves loading (or unloading) the containers with loads preassembled into a mass of known dimensions which will fit the container exactly. These preassembled loads also need to be loaded and unloaded onto road vehicles as part of the overall distribution process.
In order to move cargo and containers from one location to another forklifts are generally used, but the forks thereof often damage the cargo or goods.